Before They Took Over
by butterfly collective
Summary: In the beginning, there was the Nostromo and its crew but what really happened to them could determine the fate of the Earth. Not my characters just borrowing for fun.
1. Chapter 1

**Lambert**

She woke up from hypo sleep with one hell of a headache. She pulled her naked body drenched in some quasi amniotic type fluid and reached for a towel. God, she needed a cup of coffee even if it was concocted by recycling well, what they'd eaten and drunk before they went into hypo sleep.

The ship hummed softly, normally without Mother barking any commands at them like a martinet. All the other hypo chambers were shut closed meaning she was the first to awaken. She ran the towel through her damp hair, rubbing it dry. Then she went to find her clothes. While others slept in some variation of briefs, panties and a wife beater shirt, she wore nothing.

In the depths of space, she didn't want to forget she was all female. Not butch looking like Ripley, the only other female on the Nostromo who wasn't a computer. She didn't know how much of the headache was the after effects of hyper sleep and how much had to do with the party they all had before going under.

At least all of them except the science officer Ash, who didn't seem to be interested in anything outside of his research. She'd fancied him for a while but after hitting the stash of nonrecycled Scotch, she'd moved on to Kane.

Not the most handsome of men but in deep outer space many light years from earth who cared? She'd go for Dallas but she was pretty sure Ripley was boffing him. They'd played some classic rock, some hard punk and country western which she favored and drinking the endless night away.

They had just finished a six month job mining ore off on some god forsaken rock circling just another gassy giant sun. They loaded heaps of it in the storage holds and they were all ready for some serious bonus pay and credits on top of their regular salaries.

She heard a whirring noise and saw Dallas climb out of his chamber also soaking wet, the whorls of chest hair pressing against his chest. He wore boxers and scratched his thigh while reaching for his towel. He glanced over at Lambert.

"Hell of a party wasn't it?"

She nodded slightly though she hadn't seen him for most of it. Then he frowned.

"I'm so damn hung over. I thought the sleep would get rid of that…Mother would clean the junk out of our bodies before waking us."

Lambert stepped into her jumpsuit.

"Yeah I thought this nap seemed a bit short…though time is meaningless until we check Mother's clocks."

He nodded, knowing that she'd go do that as navigator on the team. When she went to do that, she nearly bumped into a fully clothed Ash.

"I didn't see you get up…"

He looked at her in that noncommittal way he had towards his crewmates.

"I was roused by Mother to get up and check some data," he said, "I don't think we've quite reached home yet."

Lambert arched her brows.

"What do you mean? Mother wouldn't awaken us unless…"

He looked at her pointedly without blinking his eyes.

"There was some form of emergency," he said, "I suspect that's what happened because Mother's not one who glitches her programming. I will try to find out more information."

She shrugged.

"You do that…"

She moved on to grab her shirt and then her hat to move onto her work station which faced a huge window looking into outer space. Now most of the vastness of the galaxy looked the same to her but she frowned, something should be looking familiar. Like the solar system…which they should be at about the distance of Jupiter by now.

But the gaseous want to be star turned planet was nowhere to be found. Instead she saw a couple huge gassy giants not too far from one another, one adorned with what looked like three sets of rings around it. She could see that its gravity had pulled in some smaller planets.

Damn, this just didn't make any sense. But then Kane walked up to her, sliding his arms around her waist from behind. Clearly remembered what had happened before they all went to sleep. To them, it seemed like a blink of an eye's worth of time had passed but if they were anywhere near Earth, then she and Kane had done the deed six months ago. If the Company hadn't outfitted her with a contraceptive implant then she could have been looking at childbirth in three months if she'd slipped up with him.

"Hey baby…you ready to patch us into Weyland dispatch yet?"

"Just got here. But I don't see anything out there I recognize."

He chuckled.

"Hey it's outer space…everything looks the same out there."

She shook her head.

"Not to a navigator and I'm telling you I don't see Jupiter or even Saturn for that matter."

"You sure baby?"

She sighed, putting a hand on her hip.

"Yeah Kane…I see a bunch of stars that I don't recognize," she said, "Where the hell are we anyway?"

Then she heard a deep voice behind them speak up.

"That's a hell of a good question and I'm going to ask Mother about it."

Dallas.

She nodded.

"Get back to us when she briefs you on what happened," she said, "Ash mentioned that he was roused earlier by her."

Dallas frowned.

"Well he's the science officer. Maybe it has something to do with science."

Lambert rolled her eyes. Dallas though the ship's highest ranking officer wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. Honestly, except for his hardened body that could make a woman drop in front of him, she didn't know what Ripley saw in him.

Dallas left them and she turned back to Kane who plopped in a seat next to her.

"So what did you think about my offer?"

Annoyance flashed through her as her memory caught up to the present. The party had taken a serious tone when she'd shagged Kane.

"Kane…I can't. I have no interest in working in some stupid mine on a backwater moon off of Oedipus. I'm sorry but I thought you understood…last night…well before hypo sleep that was all about getting off."

He didn't look too pleased by that.

"But baby…"

"It's Lambert now that we're back on the clock," she said, "or the calendar."

Ripley walked up to them, her dark curly hair around her shoulders in damp ringlets. The warrant officer had a manner that didn't warm up to most people. Lambert didn't like her much for a litany of reasons. But since they spent so much time in computer controlled hibernation, it didn't matter so much.

"You ready to get started working?"

Ripley was all business the instant she stepped out of the sleeping chamber. She wore her uniform neatly and she could just slide into her chair and be fully functional the next moment. If Lambert didn't know better, she'd think the woman was an android.

But Ripley had let loose at the party after some rounds of Scotch that Dallas had stashed away and had been bumping and grinding with Dallas to "Tracks of My Tears." So that made it clear she was human.

"I'm already here," Lambert said, "I just don't know where 'here' is meaning the Nostromo."

"Did you ask Mother?"

Annoyance flashed through Lambert.

"Yes of course…but she's not responding right quick about producing coordinates."

Ripley frowned.

"Maybe you're not asking her right."

Lambert gritted her teeth. God, it never took her long after waking up to remember why she hated the bitch.

"I'm asking her right. She's not answering," she said, "Dallas will get the answers out of her if it' something for his eyes only."

Ripley seemed to consider that.

"I see…well we need a list of all the known checkpoint times to cross-reference coordinates in hyper sleep, you think you can do that?"

God she so wanted to kick the warrant officer's ass. Hopefully it was all a mistake and they'd be returning to the chambers soon until they were closer to home…or she'd be kicking some ass pretty soon for sure. Ripley looked tough but Lambert believed it was all for show.

Suddenly Dallas showed up trailed by Ash.

"We need to have some chow in the mess," he said, "When we're there, I'll brief you on what Mother just told me."

Lambert picked up a cautious tone in his voice.

"Is it something…bad?"

Dallas paused.

"No…but there is a reason and it's valid," he said, "but I'll tell you the rest as soon as I round up Parker and Brett to join us"

Ripley arched her brows.

"Sounds serious."

Meaning that if they were letting the basement dwellers, aka the engineers to sit in the meeting, well it must be something majorly important. Lambert would call her on it but she knew that Parker and Brett had bonded in part over their derision for Ripley.

No one liked her except maybe Dallas when he needed a warm body. That's what she thought as she got her ass out of her chair and went to the mess.

Not realizing that her whole life was about to change.


	2. Chapter 2

**Dallas**

God, Mother can be such a bitch sometimes.

Like when she wakes us up from hyper sleep without telling us why. That type of information is for my eyes only since I'm the captain of the Nostromo. Then the whole crew hates me for their sleep getting interrupted as if it were my fault.

Bullshit on that. I was as much out of it as all of them. I remember having a party to celebrate finishing a bitch of a mining job on a forsaken rock. I'd gone off for some private time with Ripley who I thought swung the other way at first.

But no, she's definitely straight.

We didn't talk much, just screwed each other in one of the bunks that we sleep in when we're not hibernating for months when going to and from a mining job. The damn company put some clause in our contracts that we have to investigate any hint of an intelligent life form.

So Mother woke us up and I went to talk with her and sure enough, she'd picked up some damn beacon signal on LV-426. She said it sounded like a distress call and we'd been dispatched down to the dusty planet to check it out and report back.

I asked Ash about it when I saw him in the hallway outside the command room but he seemed noncommittal. He said we had to send out a team of three people to track it down and try to decide how to handle whatever we encountered at its origin.

He and I called the rest of the crew together in the mess room and broke the news to them. Parker and his shadow Brett were the most pissed off about it until I explained to them with some help from by the company manual Ripley that if they bailed on it, they'd forfeit any points or shares they had coming.

That got them on board pretty fast. I decided that I'd be heading the team down there with Lambert doing communication and navigation and Kane being backup as second in command. So after that meeting broke up, we all did what we had to do to drop down onto the rock.

LV-426 is pretty inhospitable to life form including humans. It's mostly toxic in its environment so we'd need suits and to pressurize them to avoid getting crushed like old beer cans. We'd freeze without them as the temp could fall 100 degrees below zero centigrade.

Ripley shook her head looking at me.

"I should go…instead of Kane."

"No…I need you here to watch the ship," I said, "Remember the rules…"

"I know…everything from securing the ship to quarantine. Got it. But watch yourself out there…and watch Kane. He's impulsive and that can be dangerous."

I knew that. I had to sit him on his ass and discipline him more than once.

"I'll keep an eye on him and I know Lambert will."

She rolled her eyes at me and I got it right off.

"That's not the kind of watching I mean…you know about the two of them don't you?"

"Yeah I do…and they both might be screwing but they're also professionals…"

She sighed and I knew that she'd never liked Lambert all that much and didn't have much use for Kane. Hell, she didn't seem to hold me in high regard either but she knew what she wanted in between the sheets.

"Get ready then and I'll get Ash ready to brief you."

She had that edge in her voice that reminded me of the conversation we had when we first boarded nearly a year ago. She'd been new to my crew and so had Ash, both last minute replacements. My last science officer, McDermott had been someone who'd earned respect and trust, as much as someone holding that title could among a blue collar work crew of rough necks.

Ripley, all the rest of them hated her, pretty much on sight and nothing she did since endeared her to them.

I went to suit up to protect myself from freezing, imploding or being asphyxiated among other fates the planet had in store for us. We'd landed after hitting a hell of a lot of rough chop plowing through the thick atmosphere surrounding the planet.

Kane had stripped to the waist and laid his suit out. He'd been hungry but only grabbed a recycled bar to force down.

"Where's Lambert?"

I shrugged.

"You should know better than I do."

Kane scowled.

"I only did her that one time," he said, "She's too needy for a guy like me. You and Ripley?"

I cast him a look warning him to go no further. What I did in private, I kept private. I finished putting on my suit and Kane started putting on his own. He moved towards his head gear then paused.

"What do you think's out there?"

"Don't know…hopefully nothing that will keep us down here for long."

Kane chuckled.

"Maybe it's some hot alien chick."

I shook my head putting on my boots. Kane had a two-track mind. Food was his other obsession. The first walked into the room in the form of Lambert. She was too skinny for my taste, her hair too short and spiked on the ends. Hell of a navigator but not much else.

"Ripley says it's time to get a move on," she said, "Our window of time's not long before what passes for a sun sets."

I nodded knowing that already from talking with Ash. I saw that Kane was about to put on his headgear and I did like before we all walked towards the hatch of the ship.

Awaiting its opening so we could explore a hostile new world.


	3. Chapter 3

**Parker**

The bitch walked down in her boots into the bowels of the Nostromo to tell us how to do our jobs as engineers keeping the ship in one piece. A hard landing had knocked some parts loose and she'd given us only a few hours until the sunset on this rock to put them back together so we could fly again.

It didn't look that tough. Brett and I talked about it and decided that patching this part, changing out another part and cleaning things up might just get us moving again.

Ripley's always pissed off most anyone who came into contact with her. She's one reason why the crew's so glad that most of the time together is spent in the deepest of sleeps outside of death.

"So Parker can you give me an estimate on how long?"

"How long for what?"

I loved fucking with her head. She just looked at me, her body tense and her eyes piercing. As warrant officer, she took no flak and had zero sense of humor.

"How long until you get this piece of junk ready to take off again?"

I paused, amusement in my eyes.

"Oh, five hours maybe longer," I said, "Some important parts blew out on that rough landing."

She ran a hand through her curly hair that still looked slept on from the chamber.

"Oh the atmosphere was brutal," she said, "Like flying through a sandstorm."

"So they really going out there…"

She nodded.

"I think they're just looking for trouble," I said, "If it's a distress signal, something awful happened."

"You don't get paid to think," She said, "You get paid to keep this ship together so we can fly it and so we can mine the ore."

I wanted to kick her ass but I lose some bonus points over it and I didn't think it'd help as uptight as she was.

Brett just kept saying me too, which she called him on more than once. We just stared at her as if she were a fucking genius and we were idiots. Just to get her out of there so we could work in peace.

Brett shook his head.

"Damn Company is ripping us off again," he said, "Remember those shares they promised us for checking out LV228?"

I remembered that, it'd turned out to be what my brother in the Marines would call a bug hunt. Zippo, except for some old husks where some critter shredded its skin.

"We don't go out there…we lose everything," I said, "Besides, we're safer inside here than those high ranking fools will be out there."

He nodded obviously in agreement. We hardly disagreed on anything…except basketball teams.

Later on, I went up to talk to Dallas before he left with the others to go out and find the source of that signal.

"So Ash, you think it's going to be something dangerous," Dallas asked, "We need to use any weapons?"

The science officer pondered that question and then shook his head.

"No…there's no indication of any threat," he said, "Besides if it's an intelligent life form seeking help, why would it attack any respondents?"

Made some sense to me as I looked at Dallas who digested it. I don't know how much he trusts Ash. None of us know him any better than we know Ripley. They were both last minute additions to our regular crew.

"Dallas…Kane's about ready," Ash said, "Lambert should be up here too."

"I think they should be briefed as well. We don't have any idea what's out there."

Ash sighed.

"The beacon's very primitive…very cryptic too…for a distress signal."

"You keep working on it," Dallas said, "and notify us immediately of any changes."

Ash nodded.

"Ripley and I will be working on it," he said, "We'll try to keep patched with you for communications but we don't know what the atmosphere's like out there."

Dallas adjusted his suit.

"We'll have to take our chances," he said, "Mother's not telling me much at all. What about you?"

Ash shrugged.

"No more than what she's told you."

Dallas sighed reaching for his helmet.

"Then we won't know until we get there."

Kane walked up to them followed by Lambert.

"You ready to go Boss?"

I watched Dallas nod and the three of them walked away from Ash to confer by the doorway that would open putting them in the containment area so another door would allow them to go outside the ship. They all put on their helmets and Ripley joined Ash and I as we watched on the monitor as they helped each other with their helmets.

Then the door opened into what looked like a swirling storm outside. Just like that they were gone.


End file.
